


wanting. wanting.

by LittleBlackGoldfish



Category: Impulse (TV 2018)
Genre: Gen, Season/Series 01 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-12
Updated: 2019-10-12
Packaged: 2020-12-13 22:42:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,210
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21005354
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LittleBlackGoldfish/pseuds/LittleBlackGoldfish
Summary: She just needs a bit of a buffer, between Jenna inside and Jenna outside. Something to steady her feet a bit on the increasingly rocky ground of her own identity. Henry is good for providing a narcotic balm for her fraying nerves, maybe the rest of it will follow.





	wanting. wanting.

Her brain skips as they pull into the parking lot. Broad shoulders under a black letterman jacket, the fuzz at the back of his head that Jenna can feel tickling underneath her fingers as the smooth skin of his chest brushes against her own. Fine downy hairs tickling.

Damian is with him, laughing like some sort of overgrown monkey, and behind him she can see Patty walking up with either Jessica or Leila. It hardly matters. She doesn't want to see any of them yet, doesn't want to talk to them, to be dragged back into their simple (suffocating) orbit and lose the stiff breeze of hard-edged realness that still hangs about in the car. As soon as they open the doors she knows it'll pop like a bubble blown from one those flimsy plastic bottles, fading into the background noise of high school.

So, she asks, "Can we... wait here for a couple minutes?"

As soon as the words are out of her mouth she feels stupid for asking, Henry wouldn't ask, she would demand or insist or just stay. But Jenna can't be Henry (wants to, doesn't, wants), part of her though wants Henry to stay too and that's the part of her currently running her mouth. 

So they sit there in silence. Moment dragging on moment as she stares out at Zach and Patty and Damian, and whoever. Jenna knows what happens next; she'll walk up to them, Patty will looper an arm through hers and whispers something about Zach and he'll glance over, nervous, uncertain, smiling and give her a look that asks without asking if she's ok. If they're ok. He's a good guy like that, and more than a little insecure.

That, she thinks, is probably what Patty means by 'starter boyfriend.' Rather than dash his hopes, than cause friction or disappoint, Jenna knows she'll give him an encouraging smile and settle in underneath an extended arm that will rest heavy with expectations, others not his, over her shoulders. Patty will catch on and give her meaningful looks until she's pried away to hand over all the details.

Knuckles tightening on the steering wheel, Jenna can practically feel the weight of it all settling on her. Just another set of expectations she'll have to meet. 

"Do you have any marijuana?" Is what she asks Henry instead.

There's a pause as Henry turns towards her, dark eyebrows raised, and Jenna prepares for some barb out of her mouth. A prickly comment that'll stick in her skin, itching just beneath the surface for hours.

Her mouth works, smile quirking at the corners as she says, "Yeah, I have a joint."

"Do you wanna smoke it?" She asks.

Henry's grin is full on now. There's something a little brittle about it and a lot excited as she teases, "Is Jenna Faith Hope seriously asking to get high in the school parking lot?"

Part of her wants to snap back, but the smile on Henry's face is too open in a way Jenna has never seen and so instead she just whispers back, "She is."

The laugh that comes from the other girl bleeds the rest of the tension from Jenna and suddenly she's not as worried about what comes next (though she's definitely worried about _what_ _comes next_) and she only glances towards Patty and Zach distractedly every _other_ couple of seconds. Until finally Henry slumps down in her seat.

Jenna tries to mimic her, but she's just not able to work herself down in the same way. The pedals get in her way a bit, but Henry also seems to be able to contort herself in a way that Jenna just never learned to do. She only manages to get down an uncomfortable inch and she's already worried about hitting any of the pedals. 

To distract herself she decides to watch Henry light up; studies the way her fingers grip the lighter and she cups her other hand around the flame against a wind that doesn't exist. Eyes flicking, involuntarily, towards where her pink lips pursed around the crinkled white surface of the joint itself. Suddenly Henry's jacked is tan, not black, her hair longer and in a loose ponytail that hangs down her back and Jenna's mind is filled with the vinyl and hot butter smell of the bowling alley. An imaginary tingle at her lips.

She looks away, uncertain, and looks back. Only to find that it's just Henry, no one else (not _ just _, never) and then she's taking the joint in her own hands and inhaling just like Henry taught her last time, with the pipe and the weird toilet paper roll thing. Holding the smoke in comes easier this time.

Her mind whirl, searching for something anything to latch on top and all she sees in scarlet on stainless steel. How the blade went in so easily and came out without catching and his whole body seized up. Anything else flees from those thoughts, stamped out by the pounding what ifs. What if he's- what if he's not. How did he find Henry?

Why was he looking for her in the first place? Maybe Townes is right and it's some sort of secret government experiment thing, or some super secret shadowy conspiracy. Some board of directors looking to train teleporters to steal corporate secrets from their rivals or the military looking to train super commandos with teleporting powers to kill, like, terrorists or cartel kingpins or whatever. 

And that would make that guy some sort of super spy recruiter. Who Jenna might have accidentally killed. 

"Do you think that guy is coming back?" Even through the blanket haze of the marijuana she can feel her heart pounding. "The teleporter. Because if he doesn't, that could me that he's dead… right? And if he's dead then I…"

There's still a stain on the floor if you know what you're looking for, the faintest rusty outline and every time she picks up the knife she can smell copper and her hands start feeling sticky again. But if he's not and she tried, what happens to her?

"And if he isn't then he knows where we live," she says.

Henry just stares at her, seeing beyond her. Briefly Jenna wonders if she's thinking about her father or her mother, or what, or maybe Henry is thinking about _ her _ father, about her. Her eyes flick away and as Jenna passes the joint back and Henry just says, "I dunno," all she can think about is how much she doesn't want to be the same Jenna she's always been.

Doesn't just want this feeling of safety and surety, and freedom, to existent just between the doors of her car. She wants it all the time, but Jenna doesn't know how to make that happen; she's never been anyone else except the girl who does the right thing, the thing that everyone agrees she should. Doesn't know how to stop, how to say no. 

"What if I die before I get to do… anything I really want," disappeared because of what she's done, seen, knows by the government or creepy rich weirdos. 

"That's kinda morbid Jenna," Henry says, teasing, taking another drag off the joint.

It's not just the pot in her, stereotypes about deep thoughts and getting higher aside, she's really honestly truly afraid for her life, "No I mean it." Or afraid of not getting to live it at least.

Henry just looks at her, long and searching like she's trying to figure if she should say something, but all that comes out of her, besides smoke, is, "Well whaddya want?" 

There's an answer at the tip of her tongue. Part of her wants to just blurt it out, but it's too big, too pregnant with questions and confusion to work it's way past her lips. She takes another drag herself, holds for as long as she can to buy time while her brain rushes for another answer that doesn't put everything on the line. What would it even mean? The words don't quite make sense in her head, the way they line up and the meaning that they make are too confused. Full of too much and too little.

"I don't know," her voice is more plaintive than she wants, and she tells herself it's just the smoke choking her, just the difficulty of speaking after holding on so long to the puff of pot.

"But I-I can't remember the last time that I wasn't thinking about what I should do or say to make someone else happy," she says. It's not something Henry has ever struggled with.

Henry is all sharp angles, hard-shelled exteriors and prickly looks. An immovable rock compared to Jenna's yielding softness, rotting wood beneath other people's hands crumbling away to let them get a better grip. Sure all that stubborn defiance might hurt her just as much as it hurts anyone else, Henry doesn't seem capable of asking for help without demanding it and won't say a word about anything without having it pried from her lips. 

Jenna bends under the slightest pressure, a little insistence and she will cast herself adrift in someone else's plans, but Henry. Henry will break before she bends for anything. There's a kind of beauty to that, a bloody allure that Jenna aches for (to have, to hold, to be). Doesn't know how she does it, just like Henry can't understand her.

She sighs, "You wouldn't understand." Passes the joint back and turns away, eyes stinging.

"Okay," Henry scoffs, snark prickling just beneath the skin.

"It's like, I always have to act so perfect," No one has ever demanded it, not outright, but she's _ always _ been the good girl. Meeting and exceeding expectations, but never outshining anyone else.

Perfect daughter, perfect friend, perfect student, perfect girlfriend. Saying and doing the right things to keep everyone in her life happy, even Henry, though at least with her Jenna has never said anything she hasn't meant.

Henry just rolls her eyes, "Yeah yo- you don't have to," her speech catches as she breathes out a long stream of smoke and turns to face Jenna, fixing her eyes on her. "You choose to."

Jenna can't think of a more Henry answer, smiles at the simple predictability of it, "No, this is what I'm talking about."

"Like you," Probably Henry will never quite understanding why Jenna is the way she is, how it isn't so much a choice for her as simply how she's always been. Not a pressure pushing down on her from without, but some straining from within to fit her into a hundred different molds every day. "You don't care what people think."

Now she looks at Henry again, all of her, and she can feel the smile pulling at the edges of her face. Takes all of her in; jacket swaddling her body, ripped jeans with black leggings underneath, dirty blond hair framing her face, the mole near just to the left of her mouth, the lines of her forehead creasing. Singular and whole, a collection of things that could only ever make Henry, "You're just you."

"I care," Henry shakes her head.

"Not like I do," she whispers back.

"Well, no one cares as much as you do Jenna," there's a laugh in Henry's voice and a gentle roll to her eyes. Not mean, just a little tease. And, "I haven't always been this way." 

Now there's a sort of resigned sadness to Henry's face that Jenna doesn't dare say anything, can't bear to think of breaking the intimate quiet that's settled over them now, "We just move around… like, so much that I don't have time to," Henry struggles to find the words, or to say them out loud. "Ya know, I dunno."

Jenna doesn't know. Has no idea what it would be like to be without the press and pull of all those connections and relationships; how terrifying or lonely, or _ freeing _ it might be. Cast off all the preconceptions of other people all the expectations they have of her and she really doesn't even know who she is.

"And you grew up here," continues Henry. "It's different. It's been like, fucking ingrained in you since elementary school to care... what Patty Yang thinks of you."

"Yeah," She wonders if that's all it really is. If she just cares a little too much what Patty and Zach and all the others might think of her, if maybe she's not different but is just chafing under an idea of what they think of her. 

But Henry isn't done, she bowls on, "But I dunno; who you are and who you wanna… be, or whatever," she looks Jenna up and down, from head to toe and she's never felt so fully seen. So looked on. A shiver runs up her spine.

Now the smile on Henry's face is wide, genuine and heartfelt and more at ease than Jenna has seen on her face since ever, "I say, just, fucking embrace that shit."

It's corny enough that they both have to laugh, Jenna's last pull of the joint blowing back out and into Henry's face in a haze that ripples with both their laughter.


End file.
